Why Post Exchanges Work
Introduction
You might think "I can build content myself." The answer is, yes! You can build content yourself. The unfortunate side effect of trying to build content yourself is it makes your forum look inactive. Your forum will look inactive because there won't be any conversation. The majority of people go onto forums to engage in conversation.
The other unfortunate side effect of the owner posting too much is the forum can look intimidating to new members. When the entire forum is populated by one person, especially when that person is the owner, it looks intimidating to a new member because they believe they'll be held to the same posting standards. When someone goes onto a forum to have conversation with people, and only finds conversation with one person, they'll leave. People will want conversation with as many people as possible on a forum. Post exchanges bring those people.
The easy solution to this problem is to get some new faces into your community. Post exchanges do exactly that. They help bring more experiences and ideas into your community. They can make the forum look less intimidating to regular viewer because there are multiple posters activity involved within your community. The more faces and opinions you have within your community, the more you will make conversation.
They are a quick way to increase conversation
If you currently have three active members on your forum, post exchanges will really help you to increase your forum conversation. Think of it this way. For every one post you do on someone else's forum they'll do one on yours. If you have three active members already within your community, you can expect about three or four new posts by the people already active within your community for every one quality post a post exchanger makes. How can it work like this? Simple, those three active members of your community will likely respond to that post that the post exchanger made on your forum. That would mean that you can get three posts on your forum for every one post that you make on someone else's forum!
They help build statistics
This is an obvious point. If someone is debating joining your forum, they are more likely to join if they see twenty members instead of five. People go on forums to have conversation with other people, both of the same background and of different backgrounds. The more members you have, the better chance you and your members have at quality conversation. It's your job as a forum admin to find different people of many different viewpoints and backgrounds to help create conversation on your forum. Post exchanges do just that. Post exchanges can help find people of many different backgrounds while at the same time driving up member and post count.
They put new ideas into the community
Whether it's just you, or it's many different people, eventually, the members of your current community will get tired of each other. It's because they'll seem to know everything about the current community. The same conversation will grow old. In my experience, this can happen very quickly, normally in about a week, especially if no one new joins your community. How will you get some new faces into your community? Post exchanges excel at getting new faces into the community. Think about it, you can do a post exchange with ten people, that's ten new faces into your community. That's ten faces that a majority of your current community hasn't interacted with already. That's ten people who can bring new conversation into your community! Post exchanges are the best way to make sure you get new conversation into your community.
They aren't time consuming
Honestly, post exchanges don't take up much time. It is not very hard (or time consuming) to do ten posts on someone else's forum. It only takes me about twenty minutes. It will take me much longer to do posts on my own community. Because of the fact, I've already posted all of my thread and post ideas on my forum, while I haven't already posted those ideas on other forums that I might do a post exchange with. It's a very beneficial system for everyone involved. You're helping their community, while at the same time they're helping yours. This partly goes back to point three. Post exchanges put new ideas into the community.
Conclusion
Post exchanges really do work. They are the best way to build content on a new forum. You can't do what a post exchange does by yourself. They put new faces into your community and ensure new ideas pop around your forum. They aren't very time consuming and benefit your community, and whoever you do they post exchange's community.
